10th Sustainment Brigade Public Affairs Office

Courtesy Story

BAGHDAD INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, Iraq – The R5 Team at BIAP consists of different Army units from various components tasked together to accomplish a very important mission of providing personnel accountability and movement coordination.

The team keeps accurate personnel accountability of transient personnel and coordinates movement for reception, replacements, returns-to-duty, Rest and Recuperation, and redeployment, or R5, of personnel entering, transiting, or exiting BIAP.

The R5 team consists of Soldiers from four different Human Resources Company under the command of the 271st HR Company out of Fort Buchanan, Puerto Rico. The work environment is filled with mutual respect and there is a professional work relationship with the many people involved with this operation which directly affects the success of the mission.

The team is led by Operations Officer 1st Lt. Brian Elliot, from Cape Charles, Va., Data Integration Technician, Warrant Officer 1 Richard Brumfield, of Francisville, La., and Operations Sgt. 1st Class Adrian Tubana, who hails from Waipahu, Hawaii.

The operation is divided into two 12-hour shifts. The R5 team has three distinct sections: inbound, R&R outbound and data integration.

The duties for the inbound section are to primarily focus on the accountability of the passengers who arrive from the flight line. For fixed-wing flights, once the Air Force personnel have walked them off the flight line and handed them over to us, we take them to our terminal, scan in their military identification cards and brief them on the layout and operations of BIAP.

Customer Service is an important part of their responsibilities. Once passengers arrive at BIAP, the team ensures they have made contact with their unit's representative and they have checked in at the correct office. For all helicopter flights, military ID cards are taken to the R5 team by Kellogg Brown & Root personnel who run the helicopter operations. While the ID Cards are scanned, KBR personnel brief the passengers about what to expect next in the same way the R5 team assists fixed-wing passengers.

Part of the mission consists of filling out Form-1s for fixed-wing space available requests for people redeploying, going on emergency leave, temporary duty and other mission-related instances.

The team works closely with the Air Force to fill extra seats on the flights to aid in the success of the mission and afford convenience to the passengers. During the night shift, the main task is the 10 p.m. briefing. The briefing is for passengers who want to fly out the following days. Then they are manifested onto the flights.

The data integration team makes ID cards, ID tags, resets personal identification numbers and compiles data from the flights each day. The inbound team sends transfer files from the flights and Data Integration compiles the information for reports. In many ways Data Integration is at the center of the operation at BIAP, compiling information from flights. Having a hard working and diligent team adds to overall professionalism and efficiency of the team.

Despite the different make-up of Soldiers, other military service and civilian agency personnel who work at the passenger terminal, they all work together to aid those traveling through BIAP, ensuring they get them home or to their next destination.

Many times the areas overlap one another, but the team works to help each other and have always succeeded.

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